Based on the best part of a decade embedded with the homicide units of the LAPD, Jill Leovy’s gripping, immersive work of reportage goes onto the streets, inside the homes and into the lives of a community wracked by a homicide epidemic. It tells the story of an eighteen-year-old black man named Bryant Tennelle, gunned down one evening in spring for no apparent reason, and of the brilliant, ferociously driven detective – a blonde, surfer-turned-cop named John Skaggs – on a mission not just to solve his murder but to end the epidemic for good. Ghettoside provides urgent insights into the origins of such violence, explodes the myths surrounding policing and race, and shows that the only way to fight the epidemic successfully is with justice.

Please use the Union Street entrance to the store when attending this event.

Jill Leovy has been a reporter for the LA Times for 20 years, and has been embedded with the LAPD homicide squad on and off since 2002. In 2007 she masterminded and wrote the groundbreaking Homicide Report for the LA Times, ‘an extraordinary blog’ (New Yorker) that documented every one of the 845 murders that took place in LA county that year. The Homicide Report garnered international news attention, was made into a documentary, inspired an art installation and was a finalist for the National Online Journalism Award. She has also served as an Adjunct Professor of Journalism at the University of Southern California.